Friday, December 21, 2012

At some point, it should be required to play circus and / or twilight zone music in the background whenever anyone from the Obama administration talks about Benghazi. First, the Accountability Review Board (ARB) established by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton determined that no one was accountable. Now, the two men who headed the ARB - Admiral Mike Mullen and Ambassador Thomas Pickering - appeared to say two demonstrably different things about the attack.

The relevant duration of the event shrunk from "almost eight hours" to "only about 20 or 30 minutes" when a reporter asked this "accountability" team why the U.S. military had not been sent to Benghazi to help that night.

During his opening statement at a State Department briefing, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who chaired the ARB, said the terrorist attacks occurred over a span of almost eight hours.

“What happened on September 11th and 12th in Benghazi was a series of attacks in multiple locations by unknown assailants that ebbed and flowed over a period of almost eight hours,” Pickering volunteered.

About 20 minutes later in the same briefing, as Ambassador Pickering nodded his head in agreement, retired Admiral Michael Mullen, the vice chairman of the ARB, put the Benghazi terror event in a very different timeframe. He said it lasted only about 20 or 30 minutes.

Mullen referred to the attack only lasting for "20 or 30 minutes" in response to a question about why the military couldn't have done more. Based on the CIA timeline - which said the attack he is referring to lasted nearly two hours - it would seem that Mullen collapsed that window of opportunity for the military to act.

This one is a must-read but make sure you're playing the video below as you watch the video above.